The Good Morals Column is written by Danielle D. If you want to submit your own short story, email it to publishme@theswerve187.com
The year was 2020. 2020 had been full of unpleasant surprises, but the covid-19 pandemic was the worst of all. Especially in America, as the rest of the countries that had the pandemic were already recovering. Emily sat in her chair, fantasizing about living in a non-boring fictional word, as the year 2020, and the pandemic, to her, were extremely unfortunate and boring. She was so bored, that in her mind, a pencil came alive. The pencil started to dance in a ballerina’s outfit. Emily stared at the apparently alive pencil, flicking it off the table in sub-consciousness, staring at the wall while doing it. She suddenly heard a tiny scream come from under the table.
“EEK! How dare you interrupt my dance routine!” the pencil said in anger.
“My bad”, Emily replied, “I thought I was hallucinating from my situation.”
“What situation?” the pencil replied, looking at her in curiosity.
“The situation of me being boring,” she replied in a flat, boring voice.
“Okay, lookie here girly, I’ve only been alive for 5 seconds, and I already know plenty of reasons why the pandemic and 2020 are not boring.”
“Suuuuuuuure”, Emily replied in a sarcastic voice.
“Some people are dying every day because of the pandemic, some people are ignoring science, some people are trying to make a good change, some people are trying to survive…”
“What’s your point?” Emily asked with the dullest voice you could ever imagine coming from a 11 year old.
“Okay, you know what, this conversation is over, since you clearly don’t understand logic.”
“I understand logic, you just don’t have a big enough brain to comprehend my question. Now if you’ll excuse me, I will now try to teleport myself into a fictional world.”
(The pencil is her own hallucination.)
The Swerve 